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Tour de Cryx – The Mortenebra Plan Overview

Well, I’ve finished the first of the Casters you all voted on, and now I am moving on to the second. Fortunately, it’s going to be a bit easier this time around. Well, it’ll be better than Sturgis2 with all except one other caster. Let’s move on, though. Let’s take a look at the new caster, recently released and voted on by the crowds – Mortenebra, Numen of Necrogenisis. The format should be similar to people who’ve read the others.

First, the results of the Poll. This one was great to see because I got to play with a caster right as they came out, and it was really enlightening to see how she worked.

Now. Onto Mortenebra, Numen of Necrogenisis.

I want to address something, fairly quickly I hope, that privateer needs to figure out, and that is managing expectations. Teasing product is fine, and making sure that everyone gets hyped about product is vital to the way that a product sells.

That said, there have been a number of times when the product tag, and the sales blurb, have created expectations that simply fall flat. One of the big instances is that with Dominar Rasheth. His blurb hyped his connection to titans and got people pumped for a titan heard, which never showed up until his theme.

The same thing happened here, honestly. Numen of Necrogenisis is, roughly, Spirit of Death-creation. It spurs thoughts of risen zombies and construction of undead and so forth. The problem is, that when her card came out, there was nothing of the sort even close to her card. Its a failed expectation. Her name means nothing other than sounding cool, and that sucks. Take a page from MTG’s book. If a thing flies, it has to be shown flying, and if it doesn’t fly, it cannot be shown flying. Don’t promote models in ways that don’t actually work.

Ok. Now!

Spells and Feat

When I first looked at her spell list, I was dismissive of it. Her nuke is essentially dead, though a 2 cost pow 12 with a random upside isn’t nothing. Curse of Shadows is effective, if completely boring to see on a caster – we all pine for Parasite, Locomotion is a poor mans Energizer and Failsafe is an armor buff for our jacks with no armor. Adding a little to only a little rarely nets a lot. Finally, we have a great spell, in Spell Piercer. While it is great, it didn’t thrill me right off the bat.

I took a few minutes, though, and started to think on it. Her spell list does a lot of stuff, and fairly subtle.

Locomotion, while a poor mans energizer, can potentially do a lot more, and can be done for less if you only need to move one model one inch. Its not often, but sometimes you only have one focus to play with.

Spell Piercer is a faux to hit buff, making many of our models more accurate into some of my most irritating situations, like Defenders Ward, Holy Ward, and Temporal Flux. Simply being able to ignore them makes some of our more accurate models even better for their points.It working on guns is gravy. I can’t wait to see someone put out a cool gunline with her.

It was pointed out to me that Arcantrix Bolt stops countercharging, which is adorable.

Curse of shadows is ubiquitous and allows interesting movement shenanigans, which is always helpful. Additionally, stopping free strikes can make Locomotion really excellent.

Failsafe on Deathjack is bonkers good, allowing him an all day +3 focus, even if arms and cortex get randomly tanked. This is a great feature that I never saw, but really, really liked.

her feat also needs to be considered. Its a strong feat, much stronger than the masses give it credit for, in my opinion. The big tipping point is that its not going to be used to assassinate. Instead, this is going to be used to break the back of the enemy, destroying most of the pieces that can really be used to take down your heavies quickly. Its an attrition piece and feels really good for me.

Synergies

So, What models like these spells and want to be in the army:

Well, you’ll need to start out with a big battlegroup. Big is relative though. For Cryx, I was looking at 3 heavies and 2 lights. Three heavies will likely allow one to get there, mostly unmolested, and if molested thoroughly enough, then under the effects of fail safe. This is critical for destroying many of the heavy targets that I will be going after.

I will also need to have a pair of lights to apply the feat where needed. I could go wide and go with three lights, one as an arc node and two as feat enablers, but I think its more solid to double up on capabilities when possible. This did mean that I would like the lights with melee weapons, so I reached for Deathrippers, the old standby from ages past, to fill the roll.

Next I wanted to drop in Deathjack. I don’t often feel that way, as his price tag of 23 points is fairly steep. On the other hand, he has such damage potential under the feat that it is almost unbelievable. The right circumstances (feat + Curse of Shadows + Dark Shroud) allows him to take down nearly every model in the game, and once you add spellpiercer in, and it doesn’t matter what is on the target, he is likely to remove it.

I started the second two off as Slayers, reaching for the cheapest models I could find, but over time, thinking about the models I was using, I realized I wanted to try the barbarous Seether out. With MAT 8, he could likely take down many caster, and with a free charge, P+S 17 and all the buffs, he could be a short sub in for Deathjack when the targets are less sturdy than a colossal, or when Deathjack is out of commission.

(aside – Before I got to my first game, however, the Bane CID came out into its first wave. In that, the Bane Warriors were reduced by 2 points. I immediately upgraded my second Seether to Barathrum. I never looked back. I’ll talk about him in the Midpoint)

My battle group fanned out, I wanted to start filling out the rest of the army.

With Infantry, I wanted the highest MAT models, so that I could take full advantage of Spell Piercer. Satyxis caught my eye right away as both units have good synergy with gang, and often the only way that they are stymied are by spells adding to the targets defense. They also will ignore shields and Shield wall, allowing them to bypass many of the armor buffs ahead of them. Added to that they the target can easily get Curse of Shadows, most times, and you can take down even the toughest models – Cetratii under Xerxies feat and an Agonizer along with Man-O-War Shocktroopers still die 16% of the time to a charge, which isn’t nothin’, and that’s without curse of Shadows.

Banes are my next reach, and now that the Knights are really good as well as the riders, I have to specify Warriors. These models are simply because they add to the hitting power of the army. And, lets be honest, every army in Cryx that can have them, should. Our entire faction is based off of a -4 armor swing, and Bane Warriors are the easiest and most innocuous to give it to. Often, 11″ is far enough to get what you need done, running over to a target while the rest of the unit does solid work. P+S 13 weaponmasters is nothing to dismiss, and they often do work on their own. Additionally, I often have solid problems bringing them to bear against models with higher defenses, and Spell Piercer will be a boon here, as well as with the Satyxis.

Solos brought me to my last 5 points, and there are some excellent five point options in this game. I normally look at Orin Midwinter, but here I was more concerned about fueling my ‘Jacks. Instinctively, I itched over to the Warwitch Siren, now often over looked, and felt she had a solid place. Next with a single point left, It clearly came down to the soul trapper. I love having one in the army, just to gather souls if it happens. Getting 10+ focus out of your caster on a single turn can be back breaking. Getting the extra focus on multiple turns is often simply a win more button, and man that feels good.

I was pretty excited to run this list. It has heavies, lights, infantry. Two units of Infantry, none the less. They are the best stand alone infantry in the faction, though, so no one was really surprised. This, though, was the list I was going to run for the first time out.

Until the Bane CID hit.

That knocked all of the army plans into a spiral, and I really wanted to stick to my pledge of playing the casters you all voted for while I also wanted to play some CID models, especially the Wraith Engine. I also wanted to play them with the right casters when they came around, in their final form. In the end, I chose to sacrifice a lot of my plan to get some of the CID models on the board. The unfortunate part was that there was little to really test that she took advantage of. The upside was that I got to play Barathrum. Man, I made a mistake not including him right off the bat.